M 51 (Dark Sky Geek)

M 51

Here is a photograph of the famous Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51, a face-on spiral galaxy located 31 million light years away from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs)

I took this photograph a few days ago, between April 8 and April 14, from my house, located in the middle of a "white zone" — 8 on the Bortle scale — in San Jose, CA. In plain English, it means that I live in a very light polluted area...

This image is the result of 25 hours of exposure over 5 nights: 20 hours of luminance (broad spectrum) and 5 hours of narrowband data (OIII + H alpha).

My primary intent was to demonstrate that with relatively modest equipment and not a lot of experience, it is possible to obtain decent results, even under an urban sky.

In this photo, a very faint magnitude 20.3 quasar is visible. That object, named SDSS J133004.71+472301.0, has a redshift z=2.85, which is a velocity of 0.87c. That places it at 11.8 billion light years from Earth. Yes, billion with a "B". That's almost the edge of the visible universe. From my backyard in San Jose. How cool is that?!!!

- Telescope: Astro-Tech AT130EDT with HoTech SCA field flattener

- Mount: iOptron CEM70

- Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro (OSC)

- 620 x 2 minute exposures with Astronomik L3 (luminance filter)

- 77 x 5 minute exposures with Optolong L-eXtreme (narrowband OIII + H alpha filter)

- Processed in PixInsight

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	n/a
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Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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